Break out all your old handhelds, untangle your link cables, and head back to the Bulbapedia; Nintendo has announced that Pokémon Black/White, the latest iteration in the main series Pokémon franchise, will be arriving in North America on March 6. The 4th major Pokémon release on the DS—and possibly one of the last major games to come out on the DS—has been enormously successful in Japan since its launch last September, selling 2.6 million copies in its first week on the market.
Unlike Pokémon HeartGold/SoulSilver, the previous set of main series releases, Black/White marks the latest “generation” of the franchise, which means that the upcoming release will introduce a number of brand new features to the series, including new regions, gameplay systems, combat moves, Hidden and Technical Machines, online features, visual effects, and professors named after trees (Juniper!).
Oh, and you’ll also encounter 156 brand new Pokémon—the most ever introduced in a single generation—bringing the grand total of playable monsters in Black/White to 649. At this point, Game Freak has probably created a Pokémon doppelganger based off of every living organism on the planet.
In addition to even more Pokémon to stuff into balls, Black/White also expands on a number of features introduced in the previous Pokémon generations. The Pokéwalker" pedometer has been reworked and transformed into the “Pokémon Dream World,” a special out-of-game website where players can upload their miniature monsters and send them exploring in the hopes of discovering special items and even catching unique Pokémon. Basically, it’s all of the functionality of the Pokéwalker without all of that, you know, walking.
Also of note: Pokémon Black/White will be the first entry in the main series franchise to introduce fully animated character sprites for every single Pokémon. I cannot stress enough what a monumental update this is for the franchise. I also cannot stress enough what a huge bummer it is that animation would somehow qualify as a major update for this franchise.
Still, the changes and updates coming to Black/White sound totally welcome, and I’ll almost assuredly be in line at my local game store come March 6 to pick up a copy of Pokémon White. And Pokémon White is totally the version to get, by the way, because the weird rock-dragon thing on the cover is definitely way cooler than the furry alien-dragon thing on the cover of the other version.